Tag Archives: house

House Dems Demand Investigation of Michael Flynn’s Putin Dinner

by ClydeFeakes Posted on February 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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A key Trump White House official may have violated the Constitution in 2015 when he delivered a paid speech in Moscow and dined with Vladimir Putin, congressional Democrats alleged Wednesday. According to the lawmakers, Michael Flynn, the controversial national security adviser, may have run afoul of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.

Since Donald Trump’s election in November, ethics experts have raised concerns that the president’s many overseas business interests might violate the Emoluments Clause—a provision that prohibits federal office holders from accepting financial benefits from a foreign government. But the possibility that Flynn, a retired Army general, may have also violated the clause is new.

The concern was raised in a letter signed by top Democrats on the House Oversight, Armed Services, Judiciary, Homeland Security, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs committees and focuses on a trip to Russia that Flynn took in December 2015. On the trip, Flynn attended a 10th anniversary gala celebration for RT, the pro-Russia news outlet owned by the Russian government. At the gala, Flynn appeared on a panel and then sat next to Putin during dinner. Flynn retired from the military prior to the trip, but the Democratic letter notes that he may still have been covered by the Emoluments Clause.

In an interview with the Washington Post last year, Flynn downplayed the importance of the meeting by making it clear that he was only there as a paid speaker.

“I was asked by my speaker’s bureau, LAI. I do public speaking. It was in Russia. It was a paid speaking opportunity,” Flynn told the Post. “The gig was to do an interview with RT correspondent Sophie Shevardnadze. It was an interview in front of the forum, probably 200 people in the audience.”

Flynn would not tell the Post how much he was paid for the event. The White House did not immediately respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment on the letter.

Flynn had a long career in the US Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant general, and spent two years as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Barack Obama. After clashing with Obama, Flynn retired from the Army in August 2014, roughly 16 months before his trip to Moscow. But the House Democrats’ letter points out that the Department of Defense has issued multiple warnings to retired military officers about accepting payments from foreign governments.

“Significantly, retired regular military officers are also subject to the Emoluments Clause because they are subject to recall, and, therefore, hold an ‘Office of Profit or Trust’ under the Emoluments Clause,” a 2013 Department of Defense white paper reads.

The Democrats point to other Department of Defense memos making clear that the restriction covers commercial entities owned by foreign governments, which could include RT because it is part of the state-owned RIA Novosti press agency.

The letter was sent to newly confirmed Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It asks for an investigation, including an examination of communications between Flynn and RT, as well as the details of how much he was paid.

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House Dems Demand Investigation of Michael Flynn’s Putin Dinner

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Trump’s Immigration Fiasco Might Be More Premeditated Than We Think

by RolandoAngel970 Posted on January 29, 2017

Mother Jones

Harold Pollack on President Trump’s immigration fiasco:

The President’s team had months to prepare this signature immigration initiative. And they produced…an amateurish, politically self-immolating effort that humiliated the country, provoked international retaliation, and failed to withstand the obvious federal court challenge on its very first day.

Given the despicable nature of this effort, I’m happy it has become a political fiasco. It also makes me wonder how the Trump administration will execute the basic functions of government. This astonishing failure reflects our new President’s contempt for the basic craft of government.

This sure seems to be the case. For the barely believable story of just how incompetent the whole exercise was, check out this CNN story. It will leave your jaw on the floor. And yet, there’s also one tidbit that makes me wonder if the chaos attending the rollout was quite as unintended as we think:

Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen — did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.

The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President’s inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.

The decision to apply the executive order to green card holders, including those in transit, is almost insane. Whatever else he is, Steve Bannon is a smart guy, and he had to know that this would produce turmoil at airports around the country and widespread condemnation from the press. Why would he do this?

In cases like this, the smart money is usually on incompetence, not malice. But this looks more like deliberate malice to me. Bannon wanted turmoil and condemnation. He wanted this executive order to get as much publicity as possible. He wanted the ACLU involved. He thinks this will be a PR win.

Liberals think the same thing. All the protests, the court judgments, the press coverage: this is something that will make middle America understand just what Trump is really all about. And once they figure it out, they’ll turn on him.

In other words, both sides think that maximum exposure is good for them. Liberals think middle America will be appalled at Trump’s callousness. Bannon thinks middle America will be appalled that lefties and the elite media are taking the side of terrorists. After a week of skirmishes, this is finally a hill that both sides are willing to die for. Who’s going to win?

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Trump’s Immigration Fiasco Might Be More Premeditated Than We Think

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 January 2017

by AngelikaFlannaga Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Our furballs don’t tend to curl up together much anymore. They still play, mostly by chasing each other around the house like crazed lemmings during the witching hour (about 8 pm or so), but I don’t often get pictures of them together.

But a few days ago they were kinda sorta curled up next to each other on the bed. Luckily for you, I have an upstairs camera and a downstairs camera, so I was able to record this for posterity before they headed downstairs for the food bowl. Hopper is sporting her usual disdainful look at daddy’s omnipresent camera. Teenagers. What can you do?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 January 2017

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There’s a Good Reason Democrats Aren’t Opposing Every Trump Nominee Unanimously

by KeiraHolton Posted on January 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Why aren’t Democrats voting against President Trump’s cabinet nominees en masse? Is it because they’re just a bunch soft-headed Beltway lifers who don’t understand that the base is pissed and wants them to fight fight fight?

Nope. I’m sure they all get that. But there are two reasons not to do this. The first is simple: the tradition that presidents should be able to choose their own cabinet officers really is important. It’s important on its own merits, and it’s also important politically. We simply can’t get to the point where opposition parties routinely vote against every appointee for everything. That would be disastrous anytime different parties control the Senate and the White House.

But maybe this is still too wishy-washy for you. So here’s another reason: if Democrats vote against everyone sight unseen, then Republicans will vote for everyone sight unseen. However, if Democrats demonstrate that they’re considering each candidate on the merits, they have at least a fighting chance of defeating one or two of Trump’s nominees. Betsy DeVos, for example, has shown that she’s flatly ignorant of an astounding amount of basic education policy. It might be possible to persuade two or three Republicans to oppose her on these grounds—but only if the entire confirmation process isn’t a pure partisan battle.

So that’s that. There’s a principled reason for not opposing everyone unanimously, but there’s also a pragmatic reason. It won’t make a huge difference, but it might keep one or two of Trump’s worst qualified nominees out of the cabinet.

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There’s a Good Reason Democrats Aren’t Opposing Every Trump Nominee Unanimously

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

by NatalieS20 Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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I went to lunch, did a bit of shopping, and came home. Elapsed time: about 90 minutes. In that span:

President Trump endorsed a plan for a 20 percent tax on imports from all countries we’re running a trade deficit with.
Sean Spicer said Mexico’s portion of the tax would pay for the wall.
Spicer then said this wouldn’t raise prices for American consumers, though it quite plainly would.
Finally, a few minutes later, Spicer reversed himself and said the 20 percent tax is not a policy proposal after all, merely an example of how we might pay for the wall.

As of now, no one really knows what any of this means. The Trump team still doesn’t seem to get that they’re in the effing White House now. What they say matters. You don’t just toss out any random shit that comes to mind.

In the meantime, Steve Bannon took to the New York Times to up the ante on the White House war with the media:

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

….Mr. Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website he ran until last August, was echoing comments by Mr. Trump this weekend, when the president said he was in “a running war” with the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on earth.”

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin. In any case, to the extent that the media is dedicated to exposing lies and reporting the truth, it is indeed the opposition party to people like Bannon.

Then there’s this:

Finally, if you need a bit of levity to make up for all the rest of this, our friends at Public Policy Polling have released yet another of their entertaining trolls:

Then again, I suppose this isn’t really funny. Here’s my guess: despite more than a year of spittle-flecked fury at Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, most Trump voters probably don’t even know what a private server is. Nor do they care. It was just a buzzword that somehow meant Hillary was a crook.

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Trump Team Still Doesn’t Seem to Understand They’re in the White House Now

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This Rookie Chicago Politician Is Ready to Resist Donald Trump’s Deportation Fervor

by GSCClarita Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press conference Wednesday to assure anxious residents that Chicago would remain a “sanctuary city”—meaning local law enforcement won’t help federal agents with President Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants, a plan that just got a lot more real. In December, Emanuel told Trump to his face that he should rethink his proposed policies—specifically, that he should retain the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed undocumented immigrants who were brought here as young children (and for all practical purposes are Americans) to stay in the United States.

Yet even as Emanuel gets recognition as a mayor willing to stand up to Trump on immigration, 27-year-old rookie Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa has been pushing for stronger legal protections in the city—especially given the White House’s reported intent to engage state and local police in its deportation efforts. “What we really need,” the alderman told local reporters “is less symbolism and more action.”

Ramirez-Rosa is a Chicago native, the son of a Puerto Rican dad and a Mexican-born mom. He grew up in the Lakeview neighborhood on the city’s North Side and went to a magnet high school before attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After graduating, he become an aide to Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, running his boss’ social-media efforts and working directly with families facing deportation. Just two years later he managed to unseat Rey Colon, the four-term 35th Ward incumbent, to become one of the youngest members of the City Council and its first openly gay Latino.

As an alderman, Ramirez-Rosa has made immigrants’ rights his main focus, and the overwhelming message he hears from affected families is that the city hasn’t done enough to protect them. “I’ve been fighting this mayor since before I took office,” Ramirez-Rosa told me. “I wasn’t elected to cozy up with the rich and powerful. I was elected by my constituents to represent their interests.”

Chicago’s 2012 sanctuary city law, the Welcoming City Ordinance, prevents city police from detaining undocumented immigrants on behalf of federal authorities. But the law contains several exceptions: for immigrants who have a criminal warrant out on them, who have been convicted of a serious offense, who are defendants in a criminal case, or who have been identified as part of a gang. Some of these carve-outs mean that people who haven’t been found guilty of a crime could be refused sanctuary. A Chicago Police Department spokesman told me that, to his knowledge, the police have not acted on any of the exceptions, and that they were intended for extreme circumstances. Still, Ramirez-Rosa and his constituents want those carve-outs removed to give legal backup to the city’s commitment to not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Ramirez-Rosa wants Chicago, with its 183,000 undocumented immigrants, to be a model for immigrant protections. While Chicago’s law is already stronger than those of many sanctuary cities, it falls short of Philadelphia (which has no exceptions, barring extreme circumstances) and Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco (which have only a couple). He has been busy organizing and educating immigrant communities to be ready for the Trump administration. “The focus right now,” he said, “is preparing the community.”

Back in 2015, Ramirez-Rosa and more than a dozen local immigrants’ rights groups joined forces to create the Chicago Immigration Working Group, which has come up with six key policy goals. Bolstering the Welcoming City ordinance is one of them. They’ve also persuaded the city to launch an ID program that’s open to undocumented immigrants and helps them access city services. Emanuel has committed just over $1 million to a legal defense fund for would-be deportees, although Ramirez-Rosa points out that San Francisco, with a fraction of Chicago’s undocumented population, has just proposed a $5 million legal-defense fund. The alderman also co-sponsored an amendment that makes it illegal for police to threaten people with deportation during a confrontation, or to verbally abuse them. (During a 2013 raid, a Chicago cop famously yelled at a naturalized Chinese American man that he’d “put you in a UPS box and send you back where the expletive you came from!”)

This week, Trump signed orders to begin construction on a Mexican border wall and add detention centers and federal agents to the deportation effort. He also doubled down on his threat to rescind federal funding from sanctuary cities that won’t cooperate with the feds on deportations. If Trump follows through, Chicago stands to lose an estimated $1.3 billion—Congress would need to approve the cut. Trump’s attorney general pick, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is in favor of repealing DACA and opposes a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants. Democrats in the Senate have delayed his confirmation vote, which is now expected to take place in February.

Given all the uncertainly about what will happen, Ramirez-Rosa and his office are making it a priority to educate the immigrant community. Earlier this month, he started a door-to-door outreach effort and “know your rights” trainings to teach undocumented families what they can do to fight deportation attempts. Next up: a “cop-watch” type network in his ward so neighbors can alert one another if federal immigration agents are in their area. In an act of solidarity, Ramirez-Rosa has even declared his office a sanctuary location, a move he hopes other aldermen will copy.

Ramirez-Rosa was in talks with Emanuel’s office last year. The mayor wasn’t always such a full-throated defender of immigrant rights, the alderman notes; as chair of the House Democratic Caucus, Emanuel once called immigration the “third rail of American politics,” and he actually pushed to ramp up deportations while working under President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s. “We know the history of this mayor,” Ramirez-Rosa says. “He just wants the sound bite on TV where he says ‘I’m your champion.'”

But the alderman is feeling more hopeful of late. The talks with the mayor have gone well, he says, and Emanuel even asked for a memo outlining the working group’s proposals. Emanuel’s office wouldn’t comment on plans to alter the carve-outs. But it pointed out in a statement that the mayor started a task force (“Chicago Is With You”) with Rep. Gutierrez and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) late last year to provide legal and mental-health services to immigrants and others in need, and he’s involved in other efforts to help immigrants.

But Chicago leaders have to do much more, Ramirez-Rosa insists. The measure of progress, he says, “is in the actual ordinances and resources that the city is bringing to bear. And we’re nowhere near the other cities that are actually national leaders on this.”

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This Rookie Chicago Politician Is Ready to Resist Donald Trump’s Deportation Fervor

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Spicer Suggests Tighter Voting Restrictions as Solution to Nonexistent Voter Fraud

by WalkerB27aru Posted on January 25, 2017

Mother Jones

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Hours after President Donald Trump tweeted that he’d launch a “major investigation” into massive voter fraud, of which there’s no evidence, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday laid out a few details of what such an investigation might look like.

As reporters and experts immediately pointed out, Trump’s belief that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in November is at odds with what his own lawyers said in court when they challenged the recount petitions of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. “All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake,” Trump’s legal team argued in a brief.

But on Wednesday, Spicer claimed that the legal team had actually only been discussing the three states where Stein pushed for recounts, not the entire country. “I think there’s a lot of states that we didn’t compete in where that’s not necessarily the case,” he said, mentioning California and New York. “I think that if you look at where a lot of potential—a lot of these issues could have occurred in bigger states. That’s where I think we’re going to look.”

Spicer also floated the idea that voter ID laws, which serve to suppress voter participation among minorities, young people, and the elderly, could be a solution to problems the investigation may find.

Spicer’s comments led reporters and other observers to question why a massive voter fraud scheme would be carried out in reliably blue states, instead of swing states where the election is decided.

It’s not just Trump’s legal team that sees no evidence of fraud. Secretaries of state, governors, and even Republican members of Congress have come forward to say they have no evidence to back up Trump’s allegations. On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned that Trump’s voter fraud claims will “erode his ability to govern this country if he does not stop it” and urged him to “knock this off.”

If Wednesday is any indication, Trump is not taking Graham’s advice.

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Spicer Suggests Tighter Voting Restrictions as Solution to Nonexistent Voter Fraud

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Donald Trump Just Replaced the White House Climate Website With…This

by MasonWebber Posted on January 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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As Donald Trump was sworn in Friday, the White House website got a major makeover. One of the casualties in the reset: any mention of the need to fight climate change.

The original White House page dedicated to the problem of climate change and former President Barack Obama’s policies to address it is now a broken link: “The requested page ‘/energy/climate-change’ could not be found.”

Instead, the White House website features Trump’s energy talking points from the campaign. The page—titled, “An America First Energy Plan”—makes no mention of climate change, other than to say, “President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the US rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.”

The page contains only the briefest of mentions of the environment: “Protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources will remain a high priority. President Trump will refocus the EPA on its essential mission of protecting our air and water.”

Here’s the new page:

For reference, Obama’s climate page looked like this:

Update: If you miss the old White House website, it’s archived here.

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Donald Trump Just Replaced the White House Climate Website With…This

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Thanks For Everything, President Obama. We’re Going to Miss You.

by GarryKellogg Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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It’s less than 24 hours until Barack Obama leaves the White House. In eight years, here’s my top ten list of what he accomplished:

  1. Affordable Care Act
  2. Stimulus package
  3. Climate actions: Paris agreement, EPA power plant standards, auto mileage standards, etc.
  4. Dodd-Frank financial reform
  5. Iran nuclear treaty
  6. Killed Osama bin Laden
  7. Allowed gays to serve openly in the military
  8. New START treaty
  9. Delivered 74 consecutive months of job growth
  10. Declined to get seriously involved in Syria

I’m keenly aware of all the criticisms you can make of this list: the stimulus wasn’t big enough; Dodd-Frank didn’t go far enough; Obamacare doesn’t have a public option; cap-and-trade failed; the surveillance state became permanent; there was no help for underwater homeowners; there are still troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; and so forth. These are all legit. Nonetheless, if you compare this list to other presidents of the past century, there aren’t more than three or four who can match it. Here in the real world, that’s pretty good.

On foreign affairs, Obama got better as he spent more time in office. In 2009 he approved a huge surge of troops into a hopeless fight in Afghanistan. In 2011, he resisted intervening in Libya but eventually agreed to a middling-size offensive. Finally, by 2013, he had learned his lesson and simply refused to allow more than a modest bit of engagement in Syria. And thank God for that. If we had committed seriously to Syria, we’d be fighting a massive two-front war there to this day. Anybody who thinks otherwise is just not paying attention.

In the end, Obama wasn’t a transformative president. But that’s a high bar: in my book, FDR and Reagan are the only presidents of the past century who qualify. Still, Obama turned the battleship a few degrees more than most presidents, and we’re all better off for it. He also brought a certain amount of grace and civility to the White House, as well as a genuine willingness to work across the aisle. In the event, that turned out to be futile, because Republicans had already decided to oppose everything he did sight unseen. But he did try.

I don’t know how much of his legacy will survive. A fair amount, I think, since repealing things like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Iran treaty are harder than they look. But some of it will fade or evaporate in the Trump era. And Obama was never able to make any headway against the anger that festers in the hearts of so many Americans toward the poor, the non-white, the non-male, the non-straight, and the non-Christian. Now this anger will guide our next four years. I miss him already, the best president of my lifetime.

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Thanks For Everything, President Obama. We’re Going to Miss You.

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Trump Is Ready to Bless Monsanto and Bayer’s Massive Merger

by FerdinaECS Posted on January 19, 2017

Mother Jones

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Not even sworn in yet, President-elect Donald Trump is already negotiating the terms for green-lighting what Bloomberg News calls the globe’s “biggest-ever” merger of agribusiness companies—a move antitrust experts say is highly irregular.

US seed and pesticide giant Monsanto and its former German rival Bayer are in the midst of a $66 billion combination, one that immediately raised antitrust hackles because the resulting company would own around 29 percent of the global seed market, and 25 percent of the global pesticide market. Here in the United States, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would have nearly 60 percent of the US cottonseed market.

As I recently explained, such market power wielded by a single agribusiness company threatens to harm farmers and ultimately, consumers. The executive branch is required to vet massive combinations based on such concerns under the Sherman Act. But Trump’s talks with the CEOs of Monsanto and Bayer apparently had nothing to do with the deal’s impact on competition. On Tuesday, Fox Business News recently delivered Trump’s version of how the negotiation proceeded, quoting incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer from a press conference call:

After Trump’s meeting with Bayer and Monsanto CEOs, Bayer has committed to $8 billion in new U.S. research and development. Bayer will also keep 100% of Monsanto’s 9,000 plus U.S. workforce, and add 3,000 new U.S. high-tech jobs.

Bayer and Monsanto, for their part, on issued a joint statement describing their CEOs’ “very productive meeting last week with President-Elect Trump and his team.” They made no specific pledges on jobs, but did note that the “combined company expects to spend approximately $16 billion for R&D in agriculture over the next six years with at least half of this investment made in the United States,” an investment that “will create several thousand new high-tech, well-paying jobs after integration is complete.”

If Trump really does bless the merger based on a jobs pledge, dismissing antitrust concerns, it would “signal a fundamental disregard for the law and for due process,” Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, told me. “Antitrust enforcers play the important role of referee in protecting competition and our market system,” she added. “If Trump lets this deal through without any review, it would be unusual and would raise significant concerns.”

According to Barry Lynn, director of the Open Markets at the New America and author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would likely “pay for those jobs by ripping off American farmers, hence American eaters,” by leveraging their market power to raise prices. If the jobs deal pans out, he added, “Trump’s team is selling out the long term interests of the United States.”

And then there’s the whole question of what exactly Monsanto and Bayer are promising to deliver. As CNBC’s Meg Tirrell notes, the companies had already announced plans, way back when they agreed to merge in September, to keep the combined company’s Seeds & Traits division, as well as its main North American headquarters, in Monsanto’s hometown, St. Louis.

In that same September announcement, the two companies noted that the combined entity would maintain an annual R&D budget of 2.5 billion Euros, equal to about $2.66 billion. That amounts to about $16 billion over six years—exactly what Monsanto and Bayer said to expect in its recent joint statement.

Then there’s those jobs. Recall that Trump spokesman Spicer said on the press call to that the combined company had committed to “keep 100% of Monsanto’s 9,000 plus U.S. workforce, and add 3,000 new U.S. high-tech jobs.” But the joint statement from Monsanto and Bayer promised no such thing, only offering a vague reference to “several thousand new high-tech, well-paying jobs after integration is complete.”

It also bears noting that in the joint statement following the merger plan in September, Bayer and Monsanto promised their shareholders “total synergies of approximately USD 1.5 billion after year three, plus additional synergies from integrated solutions in future years.” In corporate-merger speak, “synergy” means cost savings from from combining operations and eliminating overlapping jobs: one of the major motivations for merging in the first place.

I asked a Monsanto spokeswoman whether the Trump team’s depiction of Bayer-Monsanto’s jobs commitment was accurate. She pointed me back to the joint Monsanto-Bayer statement, and declined to comment further.

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Trump Is Ready to Bless Monsanto and Bayer’s Massive Merger

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